Arise Sir Ming - accolade for arch critic of war

Tuesday 30 December 2003 21.03 EST
First published on Tuesday 30 December 2003 21.03 EST

Leading players on both sides of Westminster's most bitter political controversy of 2003 - the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq - are recognised with a Lib Dem arch-critic of Tony Blair's policy getting a knighthood and the No 10 spokesman a CBE.

Prominent in the controversy has been Menzies Campbell, the elegant Edinburgh barrister MP, his party's foreign affairs spokesman and former Olympic sprinter.

The new Sir Menzies - known as Ming - recovered from a serious brush with cancer to resume the prominent role he took in challenging the legal basis for the war and the "dodgy dossiers" regarding WMD.

Godric Smith, the civil servant who gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry about his limited role in the decision to "out" the late Dr David Kelly as a suspected leaker, has been trying to leave Downing Street for much of the year. But Alastair Campbell's departure as Mr Blair's communications chief left Mr Smith, who took over media briefings in 2001, an indispensible figure.

On the other side of the fence an OBE goes to Ann Sloman, the chief political adviser to the BBC during the row over Andrew Gilligan's "sexed up" allegations, and a low-key player who has just retired.

Two other MPs are knighted - Labour's Stuart Bell, also a barrister and near-neighbour of Mr Blair's as the loyalist MP for Middlesbrough, and John Butterfill, a Tory deputy speaker and the MP for Bournemouth West.

There are no peerages, though at least a dozen new "working peers" - people expected to pull their weight in the Lords - are due to be gazetted shortly.

The ex-defence secretary Lord Robertson, the retiring secretary-general of Nato, gets a CMG.

Years of controversy have drained the overtly political component from honours lists. But the knighthood for Simon Jenkins, the ex-editor of the Times and a prominent member of the great and good, will confirm that newspaper's enduring establishment role as a friend of successive governments.